Back from London on Monday and back into work on Tuesday to find the whole of Trieste brought to a standstill as a result of the security for the visit of Angela Merkel to the city for her meeting with Silvio Berlusconi. Security wasn't that tight though and a short balding man, apparently some kind of clown, leapt out from behind one of the huge flagpoles on the Piazza dell'Unità to accost Ms. Merkel shouting 'cuckoo!':



Finally, weaved my way around the roadblocks got into work and dumped the car in the middle of a square close to the museum (demonstrators having filled my usual car-park), reasoning (correctly as it happens), that all the municipal police (as well as what appeared to be half of Italy's police force and carabinieri) would be busy elsewhere. No parking ticket!!

A couple of interesting trays of birds to work on this week, the highlight (so far) being a White-winged Cotinga (Xipholena atropurpurea), an endangered CITES I species from the rainforest on Brazil's Atlantic coast:



Without further ado, here are a couple of brightly-coloured birds that I couldn't get an immediate handle on today. They seem very closely related and should be very easy for someone:



and



Back in the museum all day tomorrow - so another post tomorrow evening!